“He didn’t look at me,” I protest.
She scoffs. “Whatever.”
“Christian and I are friends,” I try to explain. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Maybe you do,” Kay says with a shrug of her bare shoulder. “But you still look at him.” My face must be the color of beets.
Then she looks me up and down, taking in my dress. “You’re going to have to step it up if you want to be with him.”
“Mind your own business, Kay,” I say then, pissed, and storm out.
And plow straight into Christian. Just as another slow song begins to play.
I’m starting to think that prom is forever cursed for me.
“Hi,” he says. “Dance with me, Clara?”
We belong together, springs to my mind. I can’t tell if it’s him or me who thinks it.
Insert fluttery panicky feeling in my chest.
“What . . . I . . . God,” I stammer, then sigh in exasperation. “Where’s Ava?”
“Ava’s not my date. I came stag.”
“Stag. You. Why?”
“So my date wouldn’t get offended when I wanted to dance with you,” he says.
That’s when I notice Tucker about five feet away, listening. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he says, moving to my side and slipping his arm around my waist. “Clara has a date. Me.
So your tough luck.”
Christian doesn’t look fazed.
“It’s one dance,” he says. “Clara and I are friends. What’s the big deal?”
“You had your chance,” Tucker replies coolly. “You blew it. So go step on someone else’s toes.”
Christian hesitates. Looks at me.
Tucker shakes his head. “Dude, don’t make me knock you around in here. I don’t want to mess up my tux.”
A muscle ticks in Christian’s cheek. I get an I-could-kick-your-sorry-butt-if-I-wanted-to vibe from him, clear as day.
God. Men.
I step between them.
“No offense, Tuck,” I say, turning to him, “but I am not a piece of meat, okay? Stop growling over me. I can handle this myself.”
I turn to Christian. “No,” I say simply. “Thank you for the offer, but I have a date.” I decide where I belong, I tell him silently.
He nods, takes a step back. I know.
Then I take Tucker’s hand and lead him away to the dance floor, leaving Christian standing there alone.
The dance isn’t much fun after that. I expend a huge amount of energy trying to block Christian out, while at the same time trying not to think about him at all, which turns out to be impossible. Tucker and I are both tensed up for the rest of the night, quiet, pressing close as we dance, holding on like we’re afraid we might slip away from each other.
We don’t talk on the way home.
Before I moved here, I never got the whole love-triangle thing. You know, in movies or romance novels or whatnot, where there’s one chick that all the guys are drooling over, even though you can’t see anything particularly special about her. But oh, no, they both must have her.
And she’s like, oh dear, however will I choose? William is so sensitive, he understands me, he swept me off my feet, oh misery, blubber, blubber, but how can I go on living without Rafe and his devil-may-care ways and his dark and only-a-little-abusive love? Upchuck. So unrealistic, I always thought.
Joke’s on me, I guess.
But Christian and I were kind of assigned to each other. He’s not interested in me because of my devastating good looks or my winning personality. He wants me because he’s been told to want me. I feel things for him because he’s like this big mystery to me, and because I’ve been told to want him, and not by just my mother but by the higher powers, the people upstairs, the Big Guy. Plus Christian’s hot, and he always seems to know the right thing to say and he gets me.
Joke’s really on me.
And why—this is what I can’t understand—do the people upstairs care about who I love when I’m seventeen years old? Tucker is my choice. My heart, making its own decisions.
I suddenly feel the urge to cry, the biggest surge of sorrow I’ve felt in a long time, and I think, God, will you just leave me alone?
“Everybody okay?” Wendy says, nervously, from the backseat.
“Peachy,” I say.
And then Tucker says, “What’s that?”
I stomp on the brakes and we screech to a stop.
Someone’s standing in the middle of the road. Waiting for us, it seems. A tall man wearing a long leather coat. A man with coal-black hair. Even from fifty yards away, I know who is it. I can feel it.
Not my sorrow, then.
Samjeeza’s.
We’re toast.
“Clara, who is that?” Tucker asks.
“Bad news,” I mutter. “Everybody buckled in?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t know what to do, so I go with my gut. I slowly take my foot off the brake, and move it to the gas. Then I floor it.
We pick up speed fast, but at the same time we are in slow motion, creeping along in some alternate time as I clutch the steering wheel and focus on Samjeeza. This car, I figure, is my only weapon. Maybe if I knock him into next week with it, we’ll be able to get away, somehow.
It’s our only chance.
Tucker starts to yell and clutch at the seat. My head gets cloudy with sorrow, but I push through. The beam from the headlights falls on the angel in the road, his eyes glowing like an animal’s catching the light, and in that last crazy moment, as the car bears down on him, I think I see him smile.
For a second everything is black. There’s white dust floating around my head, from the air bags, I think. Beside me, Tucker suddenly comes to, inhales deeply. I can’t see him too well in the dark, but there’s a bright silver web of cracked glass on the passenger window. He groans.
“Tucker?” I whisper.
He lifts a shaky hand to his head, touches it gingerly, then looks at his fingers. His blood looks like spilled ink against the sudden whiteness of his skin. He moves his jaw back and forth, like someone punched him.
“Tucker?” I hear the note of panic in my voice, almost like a sob.
“What the heck were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Tuck. I—”
“Man, those air bags really hit you, don’t they?” he says. “How about you? You hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wendy?” he calls.
I crane my head around so I can look toward the backseat, but all I can see from this angle is a bit of her long hair in front of her face. Tucker starts wrenching on the door, trying to get out, to go to her, but it’s partly crushed and refuses to open. I try my door—same problem. I close my eyes, try to clear my head of the fuzzy cobwebs that are collected there.